


Squeeze

by nishizono



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-10-02
Updated: 2010-10-02
Packaged: 2017-10-12 22:03:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,091
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/129596
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nishizono/pseuds/nishizono
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everything is fine, just fine, until the morning John catches Sherlock squeezing his own throat.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Squeeze

**Author's Note:**

> **Disclaimer:** None of these characters are mine, nor am I being paid to play with them. All characters depicted in sexual situations are considered by the author to be over the age of eighteen, regardless of their age in the source material.

  
Everything is fine, just fine, until the morning John catches Sherlock squeezing his own throat.

Sherlock is hunched over his laptop at the kitchen table, frowning at the screen. At first, John doesn't pay him any mind, but when he realizes what Sherlock's hand is doing, he freezes. Something ticks over in his mind, something that's been creeping up on him since the day he moved in, and he has to turn away.

"Why are you choking yourself?" John mutters.

"Jenkins is lying."

John can hear his heartbeat in his ears. "Who's Jenkins?"

"Mm?" Sherlock hums, obviously distracted. "Oh, he's accused his wife of trying to strangle him, but the marks on his neck are more consistent with a man's fingers."

"And you think he's made the marks himself, to set her up for some reason," John says.

Sherlock doesn't reply. Apparently he doesn't feel the need to confirm what is probably, to him, an obvious conclusion.

"Right then," John mutters as he grabs a glass, fills it with water, and then carries it out of the kitchen. "I'll leave you to it."

And that should be the end of it, but it's not.

For the next five days, any time he and Sherlock are in the same room together, John stares at Sherlock's throat. The urge itself is nothing new; he's felt it before, in the sweltering heat of Afghanistan, in medic stations overflowing with the wounded and dying, when he'd imagined wrapping his hands around their throats and squeezing just to make the crying stop, to somehow find a few moments of peace amidst the screaming and the smell of blood drying on hot sand. But _this_ urge, the one that makes his fingers twitch every time Sherlock enters the room, comes from some other place inside him, one that wants to do it just for the sheer pleasure of it. And that terrifies him.

Sometimes he has to stop and catch his breath.

John swallows, closes his eyes, and counts to three. When he opens them again, Sherlock is standing in the doorway of the sitting room, watching him. They seem to be doing a lot of that these days, both of them watching each other without saying anything. John knows why he's been doing it, and he wonders if that's why Sherlock has been returning the favor. The thought makes him blush.

"We're out of milk again," Sherlock announces.

John forces his shoulders to relax, leans back in his armchair and flicks open the morning paper to hold it up in front of his face. "Then I suggest you go and get some."

"All right."

John's breath catches and when he hears Sherlock's footsteps descending the seventeen stairs down to the front door, his half-hard cock twitches between his thighs.

That's how it really starts.

John isn't, by normal standards, a stupid man, but even so, he knows he wouldn't have noticed the sudden change in Sherlock's behavior if Sherlock hadn't wanted him to. So every time Sherlock knots his scarf just a little too tight, or concedes an argument, or does what he's told, John watches and wonders what sort of maddening experiment he's become a part of.

They're standing in the kitchen one morning, John drinking coffee and Sherlock doing the dishes simply because John asked him to, when John decides that he can't stand another second of being taunted. He slams his coffee cup down on the counter, gets a sick thrill from watching Sherlock jump, and stalks across the kitchen to bury his fingers in Sherlock's hair. When Sherlock doesn't react, just stands there with his head bowed and the wet sponge clutched in his hand, John decides to call his bluff by biting down hard on the back of his neck.

Sherlock gasps, drops the sponge, and pushes back against him.

John snarls and bites down even harder, holds Sherlock there by the back of his neck, then lets him go and grabs his hips to shove him up against the counter. And it has to hurt, John knows it must, but Sherlock doesn't try to get away. No, Sherlock is _shivering_ in his hands, and John's breathing is erratic when he whispers into Sherlock's ear, "I hate that maroon shirt you wore yesterday."

When John lets go and takes a step back, Sherlock just stands there for a moment, then fishes the sponge out of the dishwater and goes back to what he'd been doing. John stares at him with an apology burning the tip of his tongue before retrieving his coffee cup and leaving the room.

Later that night, when he ventures back into the kitchen to make toast, he spies a maroon-coloured sleeve peeking out of the rubbish bin.

John storms into the sitting room with the shirt balled up in his fist, and over to where Sherlock is sprawled on the couch with his laptop resting on his chest. He looks up when John approaches, but he doesn't have a chance to say anything before John snaps the laptop closed, shoves the shirt into his face and stands there, waiting for an explanation.

"You said you hated it," Sherlock says without inflection.

John tosses the shirt aside and stares down at Sherlock, angry beyond belief and harder than he's been in years. When he reaches out to grab a handful of Sherlock's hair, the look Sherlock gives him-- open, raw, desperate-- is almost enough to make him come right there on the spot. Gritting his teeth, he braces himself with one hand on the back of the couch and leans down so that Sherlock has no choice but to look at him. In a gruff whisper, he asks, "Are you afraid of me?"

Sherlock shakes his head.

"Say it," John demands.

"I'm not afraid of you, John," Sherlock breathes and tips his head back, baring his throat.

John lets out a helpless, choked sound and closes his fingers around Sherlock's neck. "God, but you should be. Don't you understand? You really should be."

Sherlock has infected him somehow, he thinks. The heads in the refrigerator, the eyes in the microwave, the fingers in the butter dish, like it's normal to be surrounded by dead things, to _hoard_ them. But then again, John thinks, maybe he was never all that different in the first place. Maybe in some ways he's even worse, because while Sherlock collects the dead, John collects the dying.

"I'm not," Sherlock murmurs, and when he covers John's fingers with his own, his hand is steady.


End file.
